


This is necessary

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy says he wants his strategy to be to help the girl. So he needs to know there's a price in advance of his life. Written for the Prompts in Panem challenge "The Language of Flowers" for marigold=cruelty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is necessary

**Author's Note:**

> I got to wondering why Peeta said on the rooftop in THG, "No, when the time comes, I'm sure I'll kill just like everybody else." Why he was concerned about becoming a monster. He seemed so certain that I concluded he must be anticipating doing something very specific in the arena. 
> 
> Warning: there's a carcass in this story, just in case that may bother you.

Haymitch has one of the Avoxes make him a drink. He'd pour it himself, but it'd end up too strong, and he wants to pay attention while he preps the boy for the interview. He's anticipating the smoky taste of the liquor and is reaching for the glass already when the Avox takes another moment to add a garnish, a yellow-gold flower crowded with little petals. 

They both hesitate, looking at each other, the Avox with fingers still near the rim of the glass as if to take the gold flower back out. Haymitch shrugs and accepts the drink. The Avox disappears. A sip tells him that the flower makes the whole concoction work.

He turns to the boy. “They'll take you.”

The boy looks up, wide-eyed and pleased. Apparently among life's little joys are being included and having a request granted. “Great.”

“On one condition.”

“What is it?”

“That you make a kill at the Cornucopia.”

The boy hides his thoughts well, at least. Haymitch leans against the doorjamb and takes another swallow, listening to the ice clink in the glass and watching his face. His expression doesn't exactly change, it's more that he goes perfectly still. “Okay. Then I guess that's what we should talk about next?”

Another swallow. Dammit, no, slow down, stay helpful.

_“You think she can win?” the boy asked him last night, after the little party about the girl's score of eleven had wrapped up and the guest of honor had gone to bed. When Haymitch said she had a shot, the boy nodded and said, “Then tell me, can my strategy be to help her? Because that's what I'd like to do.”_

_He was drunk enough to go along with the conversation, and then he actually started to find it a diverting prospect. They brainstormed ideas for a bit, then he took a stroll downstairs to make inquiries of the mentors for One and Two and Four. Next step, announce separate coaching. He and Trinket were splitting the kids up today anyway. The girl doesn't even look at the boy when she hears the news. She's a strange one. He hears the consensus decision back from the Careers' mentors just after breakfast._

“No,” Haymitch answers him now, “first the interview. Let's see what you're working with there, see if that can tie into the arena strategy.”

The boy answers questions easily, affably, with a sense of humor. He isn't acting, this is clearly just how he is. At least, when he isn't being righteous about other people's self-medication. 

Haymitch concludes half an hour in that they've got this thing in the bag. He sits back. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why — beg your pardon?” The boy still thinks this is a mock interview question.

“No, we're done. You'll be fine tomorrow night, just be yourself. I'm talking about the arena now. Why are you doing this? Smart kid like you, I can see you giving me the go-ahead to pile the chips on her, having taken a realistic look at the odds. But why put in any more effort than that? Why lay a false trail? Why join the damn Careers? You do realize there's a difference between dying for somebody and killing for somebody?”

“If one of us has a chance to go home, it should be her,” the boy repeats, annoyingly.

“Did you hear what I just said to you?”

A funny thing happens there, a flutter between reflexive appeasement and defiance. Same thing happened when Haymitch hit him for taking away the liquor. He has no idea what the life of any kid in District Twelve is like, and that's on purpose, but every now and then you get these funny glimpses. “I like her,” the boy says to the window.

“Sure, you're obviously old friends,” Haymitch drawls sarcastically. “What, you owe her money or something? You thinking you'll die a hero? People'll sing your praises? You hoping she'll give you —”

“I've had a thing for her most of my life,” the boy fires back, as evenly as can be, and then he shuts up and looks away again.

Interesting. And it doesn't look like he goes around shouting about this puppy love, either. It must be very serious puppy love.

“I'd bring this up in the interview if I were you,” Haymitch tells him.

The boy blinks. “Oh, are we back to the interview?”

He's defensive, to make up for the confession. Haymitch ignores this. “Flickerman asks any tribute who's a decent age and decent looking if they've left behind anyone special. If for some reason he doesn't ask you, you steer the conversation that way, just work in something about people back home, he'll take the bait.”

“Why?”

Haymitch snorts. “To up the chances for sponsorship. Makes it a nice little story. Demonstrates she's got some human interest.” 

Don't think too hard about the consequences of being desirable. Drain the glass. Fortunately the boy looks like he understands just enough. 

“Admittedly it'll make your job with the Careers harder. Playing a double game, as it were. But I think you're up for it. You'll have to talk to them like your tale of a schoolboy crush is the ruse, to put her off her stride while you're selling her out to them. — Yes, off her stride, damn if that isn't a girl who'd take a lot of convincing. Do what you can to still look decent to the audience. All that'll come before what we talked about, where if the need arises, you attack the Careers from within. But it might help them accept you if they believe that you're laying some groundwork against her.”

He refills his glass now. He needs it. The boy paces to the window and back.

“You got all this? Make sense?” He wouldn't have expected most kids to follow it so readily, but the boy nods, and Haymitch believes him. “Then we've come back around to the kill at the Cornucopia. From what you've had to say about training, I'm recommending that you go for either a spear or a knife. I can get a spear for you to practice with, maybe tomorrow morning before they dress you up for the interviews. Knives I have, and we have a couple hours for that now. Would be longer if I could hand you over to Trinket without you cleaning up first.”

He's distracted by the thought of how much he'd enjoy her reaction to that, so the boy doesn't have to interrupt to say, “Practice how?”

Haymitch shakes himself and leans in to fiddle with the table's order pad. The things you can get from Capitol kitchens. “See you in the training room in five minutes.”

It was a good innovation when they took out the carpeting and put in a drain in a side room in each district's apartment. When Haymitch comes in, the floor mats are already rolled up out of the way, and the fresh pig carcass is hanging in the center of the room, gutted, with skin and head on. The boy arrives moments later. He looks startled.

Haymitch displays the knives on his open palms: His own switchblade, a standard multi-tool pocketknife of the sort that often shows up in backpacks from the Cornucopia, and a big carving knife that he liberated from the dinner table the other night.

The boy looks back and forth from the knives to the pig. “Oh. Makes sense.”

Haymitch figured the brute reality of the plan hadn't really sunk in yet, but he isn't happy about being proven right. “You can still call it quits, you know. Play like most tributes do.”

After a moment, the boy says, “No, may as well give this a try first.”

“Okay. You ever butchered anything? Pig, chicken, anything?”

“I've split up cuts from the butcher, that's it.”

Blade against gristle, then, at least, and maybe against bone. “That's a start. Let's talk about where you strike.”

The lesson is not that long, really. How and where to stab versus slash with each of the knives. Haymitch watches the boy hesitate on each strike and knows this is necessary. “Practice for an hour. At the Cornucopia, you need to be able to do it without thinking first. This'll get torn up, but that's okay, keep working. I'll come back when the hour's up.”

When he comes back, the mess that he fully expected is grotesque anyway. You don't get arterial spray from a carcass but there's still plenty of blood to go around. The lower part of the pig has come down and it looks like it didn't get any mercy once it was on the floor.

The boy looks up from a backhanded strike with the switchblade. “Hey.”

Haymitch comes over ostensibly to look at his grip. He meets the boy's eyes and sees, again, what he expected, but didn't want to see. Something is a little changed there. A little dead.

Desensitization is fine; losing the cheerful interview kid is not. But he says this is what he wants to do. So he needs to know there's a price in advance of his life.

Haymitch claps his shoulder gruffly and collects the knives. “You're a quick study. May as well go clean up while the rest of them are occupied. We'll run through the interview again. Do the spear tomorrow. And think from what you've seen in training whether there're some suitable targets. Not a Career, you're not trying to create a job opening.”

The boy carefully removes his shoes and rolls up his pant legs before walking through the pristine apartment.

So Haymitch is already not thrilled with himself when he starts the girl's interview prep, and that deteriorates into such an unending train wreck that he's half tempted to cancel the boy's spear practice the next morning. None of this can possibly work. They just seemed like they had some promise. As if _some_ were the same as _enough_.

Instead he has a word with Portia about keeping the boy's spirits up. She can keep him talking at least, maybe say something nice to him about the girl. And the next morning the boy takes a spear to another pig, but all Haymitch can tell him is to stick with knives.

Frankly, he's now starting to put the boy out of his mind. He's done what he can there. He needs to get the girl aimed in the right direction and he's got to fight her every step of the way. He's too deep in the weeds there to recognize, until a recap shows that the boy was shaking his head at her during the sixty-second countdown, the ways that the boy has helped cue the girl. The boy might actually make a decent mentor if for some insane reason he doesn't die in short order.

But he'd pretty much left the boy to his own devices during his final day. Which is why he's as surprised as anybody else when Peeta makes good time to the Cornucopia, grabs a long knife that he must have been able to see from his circle, and in a fast ugly brawl cuts the throat of the boy from Four, of all people, right in the view of the boy from Two. 

He drops the body and points the knife at Cato. “Allies,” he calls. 

And Cato grins and says, “You're in, Lover Boy.”

Haymitch is not exactly sure who he's watching do this stuff. He tilts the bottle to his lips, and as he drinks he figures that he's created a monster or two in his day, but they never come back, so he'll never have to meet them.


End file.
